Stir-Fry (18 page)

“Thanks, Mags.”

She blew her nose, the sound trumpeting through the empty office. The carpet was streaked with mud; it had been raining for five days. Maria pulled the moaning vacuum cleaner backward and forward over the smears until they faded to beige. She remembered a story her mother had told her on the phone last week, about how the town council had tried to house Nelly the Nutter in a cottage beside the chicken factory. One businessman fitted it up with basic furniture; another provided a secondhand vacuum cleaner for her to keep the place nice. A visiting social worker found Nelly sitting on the floor beside the vacuum cleaner, which had been on at full suction for five days. Nelly said she liked the sound. She wheeled her vacuum behind her when she went back to her rug under the bridge. Maria thought it was a lovely story and hoped the council would have to pay the electricity bill. She was always nervous when she came face-to-face with Nelly on the steps of the library, in case the woman would say something unanswerable, but from this distance, Maria remembered her with respectful affection.

What would Nelly make of a room like this, four flights up, its wet windows sprinkled with the city’s lights? Maria blew her nose and bent to the switch; silence caressed her ears. At least this work was real. The carpet was definitely cleaner when she had finished with it; the windows let in more street light when her cloth had passed over them. Office workers she would never meet had slightly pleasanter mornings because she had remembered to wash their coffee-stained mugs. Not forgetting the money, of course—little but undeniably real, notes in her palm every Friday, coins for vinegary chips on the way home. Whereas that last essay on Celtic spiral motifs—what good did that do anyone? It might get her a job in the long run, she supposed. Only she was having difficulty imagining a long run. Even Christmas seemed out of sight, at the end of a queue of cold December
evenings. Damnation, she was out of tissues now. Maria felt tears welling up as her nose began to run.

This was ridiculous, she told herself, with a loud sniff. She sat in the director’s chair and spun herself around. What she wanted was someone to walk through the swing doors and hand her a silk handkerchief, a white rose, and two tickets to Jamaica. Or even to the pictures on Saturday afternoon. Maria dragged her feet, halted the chair, and spun it the other way. Her back subsided against the firm leather of the seat. Someone, anyone, to ring her up and ask her out and take these maddening questions out of her head. She pulled up her overall and felt in the back pocket of her jeans until she found a last fold of toilet paper. Her nose hurt from blowing. She dragged the vacuum cleaner into the next office and turned it on.

Her mother would laugh if she could hear these thoughts. She had been supportive enough about Maria coming up to the uni, but at the suggestion of an M.A. she had raised her eyebrows. In her experience, girls started out as ambitious as the lads, but by the age of twenty they were usually itching to settle down with someone nice and put up curtains. Maria had poured scorn on this argument, she remembered now. She told her mother that this was just one more stereotype of female behaviour that, given enough career guidance, newspaper articles, and flat-heeled shoes, would evaporate. Mam said she would believe it when she saw it, and wasn’t it a good thing girls were the way they were or it would be a cold and nasty world full of careerists crashing into one another’s fancy cars. Maria argued that there would always be some girls who wanted engagement rings and curtains, but personally she would rather a degree and a fancy car.

And here was the loudmouthed feminist, moping over a vacuum cleaner, wishing she had a date instead of a worksheet on differential calculus. Come on now, ten minutes
more hard work and she could go home. Hot buttered toast by the fire with Ruth, gossip and snatches of poems out of broken-backed anthologies—wasn’t that something to look forward to?

They plodded up the shiny street under Maggie’s broken-winged black umbrella, avoiding the splash of a lorry’s wheels. “Enjoy your walk, so,” said Maggie at the corner.

“Do you think I’d be walking on a night like this?”

“Sure weren’t the buses off after nine tonight?”

“You’re codding me.” Maria’s cheeks were numbed by rain already.

“It’s a work-to-rule, they’re protesting after that double-decker was toppled by yobbos in Finglas the other night.”

“That’s right, I heard about it.” Maria pulled up her collar. “I think it’d choke me to spend an hour and a half’s wages on a taxi.”

“I haven’t so far to go. Have a lend of my brolly.”

“I won’t, Mags, but thanks for offering.” Maria waved and trudged off into the darkness.

W
hen the stage crew had nothing to do, they arm-wrestled.

“What the hell is that?” asked Maria, hearing screeches from backstage.

Suzette tightened her grip. “Don’t even try to distract me. It’s just the cast having a scream session to loosen up their voices.”

Maria pressed the flat of her other hand to the grimy boards. Her back was writhing. “Another of Jennifer’s innovations?”

“Indeed.”

“Stop moving your elbow in. Ow.” Maria’s wrist was crushed to the floor.

Suzette sprang to her feet, shaking the dust off her fringed shawl. “If Jennifer could see us now, she’d say our attitude was—what’s that phrase of hers?—‘less than professional.’”

“Just because she did a theatre course last summer, she thinks she knows it all.” Maria rolled down the mingled sleeves of her three jumpers. “She found me peacefully reading
Anna Karenina
the other day and told me off for not being busy painting publicity flats.”

“That’s nothing,” said Suzette, straddling a broken-backed chair. “Last night after rehearsals, right, me and Yves were roller-skating peacefully round the stage singing ‘Non,
Je Ne Regrette Rien
,’ and she walked in and threatened to kick us out of the crew.”

“I hope you told her where she could stuff herself.”

“More or less,” said Suzette evasively.

Maria blew her nose, trying not to hurt it. “If I’d known backstage work meant sitting round in arctic conditions waiting for Jennifer’s orders, I’d never have signed up.”

“You know what, you should volunteer to help that malnourished American with lights. I’m sure he could do with some company.”

She peered across the theatre at the dimly lit sound box. “Hey, I know him.” Clambering up the ladder, she had only time to call “Hi, gorgeous” before giving her head a blinding crack off a speaker.

A bony hand reached down from the darkness. “Everyone does that once,” observed Galway.

“Since when have you been a technical wizard?” She climbed through the trapdoor and slumped on a chair.

“Picked a bit up here and there; it’s easy enough if you keep your eyes open. Like, for example, that’s a light filter you’re sitting on.”

“I give up.” Maria wriggled out of the way. “I came to volunteer my services, but all I seem to do is smash things.”

Galway patted a backless swivel chair beside him. “Nice to see you, Maria. Sit. Now there’s just one thing you’ve got to keep in mind: If you bring a switch up too fast, you’ll blow the bulb.”

Her hands flinched from the lighting board.

He reached past her for his plastic cup of coffee and a photocopied
sheet of cryptic diagrams. “There’s the lighting plan; watch me once and you’ll have no problems.”

“Could we have a little hush, people?” inquired Jennifer from below.

“… goin’ to Scarborough Fair … sage, rosemary and …”

Maria could hear the faint pattern of the guitar chords as she sprang up the stairs; that must be Jael singing, much too low, so her bottom notes were barely audible. Opening the front door softly, she laid her rucksack of books by the coat cupboard. The music halted for a moment when her face divided the beads. “Hippie nostalgies!”

Ruth gave a vague smile and continued massaging the guitarist’s neck in time with the chords. Sighing with pleasure, Jael let her head slump so far forward that her sheaf of hair obscured the strings, and the song trailed off. “Don’t mind us,” she said through her curls, “we’re ever so slightly stoned.”

Maria put the kettle on.

“So, what has you looking so perky?” called Ruth, taking hold of Jael’s hair by the curls and swinging it from side to side.

“We got the bathrooms done by ten this evening,” said Maria cheerfully.

Jael shook the hair out of her eyes. “Come off it. I bet it’s that mystery man we heard about a few weeks back.”

“Well, yes, as it happens, he did go without his pool game today to buy me lunch. And he told me I should always wear purple.”

Jael giggled into her collarbone. “Do you know what that means, the colour purple?”

“No, and I doubt I want to.”

“Suit yourself.” Jael let her neck roll back into Ruth’s lap.

“Don’t mind her,” said Ruth sleepily. “It’s just the traditional
queer colour. You know—purple, lavender, nowadays pink.”

“I should have guessed.” Maria rushed to turn off the kettle. After a minute, she called over, “And he said we must go to the pictures sometime.”

“So you said, ‘Yes please, when?’”

“Ah, give the girl credit for some subtlety,” protested Ruth, plaiting Jael’s long fringe.

“I just said, ‘That’d be lovely,’ like my mammy taught me.” Maria carried over the tea tray laden with mugs.

“Sounds like you’ve got it made,” said Jael, pulling herself upright. “Who is this boy-germ, anyway? Is he worthy of you?”

“If I tell you his name, will you promise not to laugh?”

Jael brightened. “Is it something really poncy like Edgar?”

“Worse.”

Ruth reached across Jael for the milk jug. “If she laughs, I promise to twist her vertebrae out of joint.”

“Well, it’s Damien.”

After a pause, Jael asked, “He wouldn’t happen to be a big guy with a beard? And a plait? And a boyfriend?”

Maria could feel herself heating up. “Will you stop playing games with me? You don’t even know him.”

“I do,” Jael insisted. “Or at least I know a friend of a friend of his. Swear to god, Maria,” she went on. “I wouldn’t joke about it, not if you’re really into him. But the guy’s had a scene going all term with some Frenchman.”

Philippe, of course. How could she not have noticed? How could she have known?

Ruth broke in anxiously. “Maybe it’s not the same guy; I’ve never seen anyone with a beard at Gaysoc.”

“Yeah, well a lot of us don’t feel the need to join a club to announce who we sleep with,” said Jael witheringly, and Ruth flinched.

Maria bit her lips. She just wished she had never mentioned his name, or better still, never met him. Her exasperation welled up; “But he kissed me.”

Ruth and Jael exchanged a glance.

She stared into her steaming tea and answered herself: “Not that a kiss proves anything. I’ve been reading every damn signal wrong; it never occurred to me about Philippe.”

“This Damien guy is probably bi,” said Ruth encouragingly. “Don’t give up too soon.”

“He can be a necrophiliac for all I care,” snarled Maria. She sipped her tea; she had forgotten the sugar.

Jael’s mouth twisted. “Bad luck, pardner. Hemmed in by pervs on every side.”

It wasn’t hard to avoid Damien, since she was missing most of her lectures anyway. Rehearsals for
Snow White and the Seven Bishops
were stepping up, and even when Maria wasn’t needed, she liked to hover round the theatre, absorbing the warmth of overheard conversations.

Yvonne dropped by once or twice to examine the half-painted scenery and compliment Maria on her increasingly fluffy hair. One day she announced that Pete kept insisting on going the whole way in the back of his mother’s Volvo.

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why? I’m not that much of an eyesore.”

Concentrating on her paintbrush, Maria fumbled for words. “I don’t mean why does he fancy you, just why does it have to be that? I mean, lots of people nowadays are sticking to nonpenetrative sex, it said so in
The Guardian
.”

Yvonne rolled her eyes and sat cautiously on the edge of a wooden piano. “I can’t answer for your trendy feminist types, Maria, but in the real world petting doesn’t count as sex, and everybody prefers the real thing.”

“Do you?”

“It’s nice, yeah,” she said defensively.

“Only nice?”

“Pretty nice. How do you measure these things?” Her stare turned harder. “You tell me, Maria. How many orgasms a night do you call nice?”

Catching a stray drip of red paint with her little finger, Maria wavered between anger and mollification and made her usual choice. “Ah, Yvonne, don’t be like that. I’m talking from a position of complete ignorance here. I was just asking what it’s like.”

Yvonne’s voice went lower, as she busied herself brushing dust off the piano. “It’s not that it’s not nice, it’s that I’m scared. I don’t trust those damn condoms, I’ve had one burst in me. When I had to take the Morning After in August, I threw up for a week, and I’m not going through that again.”

“You could get a prescription for the Pill—”

“Cop on. I’m only seventeen; the doctor would tell my mother.”

Maria put the brush down on an old newspaper and turned to Yvonne. “Then tell Petesy babe to go fuck himself.”

“There’s no need to be hostile when you barely know the guy.”

“I think we need a cup of coffee.”

Maria had never drunk so much coffee in her life; it was the fuel the Dramattic ran on. Each day hours slid by as she tinkered with tapes and silhouette filters up in the sound box. Galway and she enjoyed dissecting the character of every cast member in turn, using a mixture of Freudian terminology and gross generalisation about national characteristics. He was a good listener. The one thing he never seemed to do was look at her. Once she was wearing Jael’s exotic purple eye shadow, and he never noticed; it was probably too dim in the sound box. She began to feel like a disembodied voice in the dark.

Of course every friendship had a certain element of what you had to call attraction. She didn’t exactly fancy Galway, he wasn’t her type. Not that she had a type, strictly speaking, but he was far too haggard and several inches too short to be it. There was just one time, near midnight after a rehearsal, when she came back for her gloves and found him up on the lighting tower, swinging from bar to bar like a demented Tarzan, and thought she might like to hold him.